


Like Paper Dolls

by master_of_one (ineternity)



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Blood, Euthanasia, F/M, Gore, Mental Illness, Post-Episode: s12e10 The Timeless Children, Regeneration, Self-Harm, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide, Violence, descriptions of violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-03
Updated: 2020-12-03
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:12:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27862845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ineternity/pseuds/master_of_one
Summary: The sound in her head won't go away. The sound of his screams fills her ears and her head and the empty halls of the TARDIS. She survives as he begs her for death, over and over and over again.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 21





	Like Paper Dolls

**Author's Note:**

> Wow. I have a really unhealthy coping mechanism.

_Euthanise me._

She can hear it from across the Universe, under sweaty twisted sheets. The cry is so loud it pierces through the shield of the TARDIS, muffles everything else into a dull whisper. The Doctor can’t hear voices anymore. There is only him.

Her friends had asked, after she’d escaped prison, if she’d wanted to talk. Yaz had looked with soft eyes, Ryan on hand with a shoulder to cry on and Graham with packets of her favourite custard creams. The Doctor hadn’t said much, her smile a little bit brighter this time, more convincing. She had twisted around the console, dancing in that way she knew thrilled them to see- and they had dropped it.

Only now they aren’t here and the whir of the engine is so lost.

_Doctor._

She sits up, turns the pillow so the cold side faces up. Around her feet, the duvet scrunches. The room is the sort of warm you feel when you’re ill; sickly, an edge to it like someone is scraping cutlery together.

_Doctor._

The Doctor thinks about planets she has visited and the views from the top of great big mountains. All the birds of paradise, some with eight claws or giant beaks swooping from the tops of trees to pick worms from plants. Giant curving valleys and waterfalls so tall you’d surely be pushed under by the force-

She isn’t going to sleep here. Maybe lie for a few hours until collecting the fam is justifiable again. Perhaps she can stick around for a little longer this time, get them to join her for a long week on Mars to see the Ice Caves. Perhaps some old acquaintances are in town, willing to let them stay over a few nights and go sightseeing. It’s not like she can’t just drop in on some old mates.

_Doctor._

_Doctor. Doctor. Doctor. Doctor. Doctor. Doctor. Doctor. Doctor. Doctor._

It’s too hot.

The Doctor shuffles restlessly, kicking off the covers in the struggle. Suddenly, the metallic air is brushing against her bare skin. Like somebody is pressed against her, running their hand across all the places she doesn’t want them to.

Discomfort builds. It’s dark too but not enough to be blinded, there is just enough light to make out the shapes of distant furniture cast in a deep shadowed red. It’s a ritual glow, as if there has been a bonfire nearby but the embers are all out.

She gets up and, with careful precision, guides her feet to the door. Something twinges.

Ah. Food. The thing she’s been putting off for a few days now. There should be something in the kitchen. A few crisps, one of Graham’s leftover sandwiches and probably the remains of a packet of biscuits.

The TARDIS places the kitchen door next to her room to stop the draft in corridor from bothering her too much. Once she enters, it becomes apparent that her hope of some leftovers has been short-lived. The only two objects in the cupboard are a jar of coffee and a tin of spaghetti.

After she searches the draws and finds nothing, the Doctor decides on the spaghetti. In the tin will have to do, the rest of the bowls are too dirty now to hold anything.

She grasps at the tin opener, turns it like Graham had shown her. Squeeze together, twist once, twice, three times until the lid of the thing falls into the liquid below.

The Doctor grunts and sticks her fingers into the can to fish the damn thing out.

Humans and their tins. Always making little containers when they couldn’t think of any other things to do. It’s endearing, almost.

Something sharp catches on her skin and the Doctor yanks her hand away. Under the pasty orange of the juice is a bright, oozing red. Her finger is bleeding.

_DOCTORDOCTORDOCTORDOCTORDOCTORDOCTORDOCTORDOCTORDOCTORDOCTORDOCTOR_

She scrambles for something, knocking the tin off the counter and onto the floor. Somewhere in the kitchen are some plasters, a first aid kit, anything to stop the bleeding.

A horrible realisation hits her. The kit isn’t here. Ryan had taken it back with him after a trip Zolfa-Thura. The wound continues to gush.

Her head spins.

_Euthanise me._

This can’t be happening now, not right now. There is orange and red everywhere, painting the countertops.

_Shoot me. Stab me. Hang me. Choke me._

She can’t hear a thing but his voice as she topples over. He is screaming in her head, as loud and vicious as a storm.

The floor is hard and slippery. Her legs scrabble desperately for purchase but again and again she slips back down, the room spinning.

_Kill me._

The Master begs, pounding at her mind. She can feel it all, the brutal desperation. She can feel him projecting the images: bullet holes gushing a thick river of blood, a pill, a knife, his neck snapped by a noose, the Master lying broken like a doll from the force of a bomb.

_Kill me Doctor._

She gags, nothing comes up.

The blood is coming faster, she can feel the vein in her finger pulse with each spurt.

There is one thing she _can_ do. No. It’s cruel but-

The plasters are gone. She has to live, if not for anything else but the truth of all this.

_Do it. That’s what you’re made for isn’t it?_

The Doctor gags again, this time with the effort of it

_Show me how much more you really are._

The golden light spreads from her palm, across the gore on her fingers. The energy is as hot as the blood, like a sharp needle pricking thread through her skin. He’s laughing though it sounds more like a set of strangled cries.

The Doctor blinks. The cut disappears and the familiar dullness of surviving sets in again.

She stands up. The spaghetti drips from her clothes. Its sticky. She will clean up later.

It is time to lie down again. The red darkness of the room is the same colour as the red she sees behind her eyes, the red that pleads inside her head.

_I want you to hurt me._

She climbs into bed. The roaring gets louder.

_Show me how little I am to you._

_Kill me, Doctor._

_Again and again until I run out._

_Make me bleed._

_Make me beg._

_Make me scream._

The Doctor turns over the pillow, cold side up, and closes her eyes.


End file.
